“What? Fuck no. I don’t think it’s weird. And I’m good sharing. I learned it when I was barely old enough to walk.”
I frowned at him.
“Shit. Wait. I was talking about normal sharing, like with toys and blankets and stuff. I’m a team player and always have been, is what I’m trying to say.”
“So this thing I’m doing with you, Cash, and Riot… It doesn’t destroy your idea of what a normal relationship should be?”
“I have no idea what a normal relationship is,” he revealed while staring up at the ceiling of the bus. “Like,logicallyI know what one is. But I’ve never seen one in real life. Vi and Dana are probably the closest thing.”
“What about your parents?”
“Don’t have any,” he said cheerfully. “None that I actually know. Mom gave me up when I was a baby. You know how you hear about babies getting dropped off at the fire station? That was me!”
I stared at him in confusion. His happy tone didn’t match the sad story he was beginning to tell.
“I grew up in the foster system. Bouncing between foster parents and orphanages. They don’t call them orphanagesanymore, they have some newer term that doesn’t sound so depressing, but it’s the same thing. Eventually I ended up with a foster family that stuck. I was about ten years old then. As far as foster parents went, they weren’t so bad.”
“And they weren’t a normal, loving couple?”
“Hah! Fuck no.” He rested an arm behind his head. “Theyhatedeach other. Argued all the time. Knock-down, drag-out fights that made the whole house shake. I don’t know why they ever got married, or why they stuck together so long, but they never took it out on us kids. We learned to tune them out. Me and my foster siblings played Clue to distract ourselves. Colonel Mustard was my favorite, but that was also Becka’s favorite, so I always let her have it. Believe it or not, Clue is a great game to play while your parents are having a fight. We could pretend that it was the actual murder in our game. Like background noise.”
“I don’t know whether to say that’s funny, or depressing.”
“It can be both!” Milo said. “A lot of life is both funny and depressing, if you ask me. Anyway, the point I was trying to make is that I have no goddamn ideawhata normal relationship is supposed to look like. I have some ideas of what it’snotsupposed to be, like my foster parents. But compared to them? This weird thing we’ve got going with Riot and Cash is fucking dope.”
“Emphasis on the fucking,” I joked. “I like that perspective. You have a nice way of looking at the world.”
“It’s what got me through the foster system,” he agreed.
I remembered old conversations we’d had about Milo not having a car or cell phone until he was an adult. Everything suddenly made a lot more sense. My heart broke for him, for everything he had been through, but I didn’t voice that out loud.He seemed to have a good perspective on the whole thing now that he was older.
And he seemed like the kind of man who didn’t want any pity.
“What Ireallycare about,” Milo said, “is that we do this again. At some point. Not right now. Unless…?”
“We probably don’t have time,” I replied. “The others…”
Up at the front of the bus where the door was located, we heard someone loudly knock on the glass.
“Speak of the devil…” I said.
“Nope! That’s my pizza.” Milo leaped out of bed and hastily pulled on his underwear.Onlyhis underwear. “I ordered it when you cleaned up in the bathroom. I’m fuckingstarving. I was supposed to be eating dinner with the band—”
“Instead of eating me?” I offered.
An easy smile split Milo’s face. “Bingo. Ah hah hah. This girl’s got jokes.”
He jogged to the front of the bus and down the steps. I heard him chatting with the delivery guy for a few seconds before he reappeared with two pizza boxes.
“Didn’t know what you wanted, so I got one cheese, one meat lovers.”
I reached for my clothes and started dressing. “I’m a pepperoni girl, but I’m easy.”
While placing the pizzas on the table at the front of the bus, Milo glanced sideways at me with a mischievous glint in his eyes.
“Don’t you dare make a joke about me being easy,” I warned.
“I was debating between that and a joke about you not being a meat lover, in spite of all evidence to the contrary.”
